


(Self) Indulgence

by MaurLin



Category: Miraculous Ladybug, Ranma 1/2
Genre: (please indulge me), Author Reacts to Characters, Characters React to Author, Fourth Wall, Gen, Self-Insert, Writing, Writing Hacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27965531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaurLin/pseuds/MaurLin
Summary: Once upon a time, in an ASCII chatroom, authors of anime fanfiction found the characters they loved invading their lives and punishing them. Their crime? Writing fanfiction about said characters- or in some cases, just reading the fics. The threat (thread?) grew to nearly a hundred entries of author/ reader tales of woe...Now, one author (who was only a reader then) has a visit from one of the character she writes about. But not for punishment, no.He wants MORE stories.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	(Self) Indulgence

**Author's Note:**

> Characters for Miraculous Ladybug belong to ZAG and Thomas Astruc. Characters for Ranma 1/2 belong to Rumiko Takahashi. The author belongs to herself (so far as she knows).
> 
> For my twenty-fifth story, I decided to delve into how I even knew about fanfiction- and credit for that goes straight to EphJay. I miss you, brother. (RIP 2007)

“Come on, Maur! Just a peek!” Cat Noir begged, curled up on the rug.

Maur glanced at her notebook, then began to type. “I’ve told you already- it’s pronounced ‘more’, not ‘mar’.” She sighed. “Although everyone on the Discord chat says it that way too. I think I’m beating my head against a wall there.”

Cat Noir smirked, leaning his chin on the staff’s tip. “Only because we’re right.”

Maur muttered something under her breath about “should know my own name,” and kept typing, glancing back and forth from the notebook to the keyboard. It was a new thing, having a character show up in her room to try to get a sneak peek at her stories. The first such invader had only wanted to berate her for _reading_ fanfiction, claiming that it supported an industry that enslaved fictional characters to untenable situations. The others who followed were similar.

But Cat Noir was different. He seemed to thrive on trouble and drama, and enjoyed every written reveal as if it were the first. (He claimed not to remember them after a given story was over, though sometimes he remembered small details as dreams. At least, that’s what he’d _said._ )

“So you write out your stories by hand?” The cat hero seemed determined to interrupt.

She sighed again. Clearly no work was going to get done until his curiosity was satisfied. “Yes, I write things out. Not everything; just scenes and dialogue when something strikes. I had to buy a notebook once when I was out shopping to get an idea down while I had it.”

“And this is the story you’re working on? Let me see!” Cat Noir snatched the notebook out from under Maur’s gaze; she squawked in annoyance.

“I’m trying to work on that, cat-boy! Give it back!”

“In a minute- don’t want any unrealistic portrayals here…” Cat Noir held the notebook up over his head, waiting for Maur to try to get it back.

She just sat there, glaring.

“I’m not dumb enough to chase after you for it, boyo. I’m way older than you. Besides,” an unholy grin moved across her face, “it won’t do you any good.”

Cat Noir blinked, then looked at the notebook. The writing was… _what IS that?_

The page was covered in tiny characters, but it was like no language he had ever seen. Not French, not Chinese, not even the English they were currently speaking.

“Hey- what is this? Some kind of joke?”

“Nope. That’s how I write my stories.” Maur shrugged at the cat hero. “It’s necessary.”

“It’s _necessary_? How is writing like this-“ Cat Noir tried to find words to describe it, and failed, “necessary?” He narrowed his kitty-slit eyes. “You’re _trying_ to keep other people from reading your stories, right? You’re paranoid!”

Maur rolled her head back on her neck and covered her eyes with one hand. “No, I’m not writing in code to keep people from reading my stories before their time. That’s just a nice side benefit.” She peeked at him through her fingers. “I write in code to keep _me_ from reading my stories.”

Cat Noir tried to wrap his mind around this as he slowly lowered the arm with the notebook. “But- you were! Just now! Putting it in the computer!”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, how do you do that if you can’t read it? And how do you write what you can’t read?”

Maur sighed and pushed aside her laptop. “It’s a complicated story, Cat Noir. And, like I said, necessary if I’m going to tell any story at all.”

Cat Noir dropped into the opposite chair, setting the notebook on the table. “I’m all ears,” he said, flicking one for emphasis.

She gave him a stern look. “If I tell you, do you _promise_ to take yourself back through that dimensional gate and shut it behind you?”

“Cat’s honor.” He rested his chin on his fists. “So what’s the story?”

“So it’s like this. I have a very loud, very obnoxious Inner Critic.”

“A what now?”

“An Inner Critic. The voice inside your head that tells you that you’re doing something stupid, even if you’re really not. Makes you feel guilty and ashamed and embarrassed. Sometimes it’s loud enough to take over and drown out what you want to do, and makes you afraid to do it for fear of looking dumb.”

“Oh.” Cat’s ears flattened to the top of his head. “I’ve got one of those.”

Maur huffed a laugh. “Everyone does. And mine particularly hates it when I write stories in plain English. I can’t tell you how many stories never got past the first line because my Inner Critic shouted ‘That’s stupid!’ and made me cross it out and throw it away.” She looked away from Cat Noir. “They leave me alone when I write in my journal, because no one will ever read that, but a story I might show to other people?” She suppressed a shiver, but then brightened. “But then I noticed something odd.”

Cat Noir’s ears were perked again, and he stared at the storyteller. “What?”

Maur smiled. “I noticed that my Inner Critic doesn’t do anything while I type. And after a while, I finally figured out why.”

She paused, and Cat Noir could tell it was to annoy him a little- probably for the notebook theft. He let the pause drag out, but gave up pretending not to care. “Why?”

“Because I don’t touch-type.” She shrugged again. “I use a method I call ‘advanced hunt-and-peck’. All my fingers are on the keyboard, as if I’m touch-typing, but I don’t look at the screen; I look at my hands. It’s because I’m working so hard to spell correctly and punctuate. When I finally look at the screen, it’s like-“ Maur waved a hand. “Like the words just magically appeared there. My brain doesn’t think of them as _mine._ So my Inner Critic goes back to their real job of story editing, smoothing out sentences without commentary on how good they are.”

Cat Noir had a thoughtful look on his face. “So what does that have to do with the notebook- and writing in code?”

“Well, I can’t carry my laptop everywhere just in case I get an idea for a story. So I had to find a way to create the same disconnect to the words on the page that I have with words on a screen.” Maur picked up her pen. “I made up this code when I was ten, and I can write in it at a reasonable speed. But I’m still mentally translating each letter as I write it, and I can’t read it back without doing the same thing. So my brain is wholly occupied with the _translating_ part, and Inner Critic has to just sit down, shut up, and wait their turn. And by then, they’ve forgotten to tell me how silly my writing is.”

“So you’re fooling yourself.” Cat Noir scratched the back of his head.

Maur smiled again. “Pretty much. It works for me, anyway. Lets me get on with storytelling.” She gave him a look. “Which is what I was doing before I was so _rudely interrupted_ …”

She wasn’t really mad at him, Cat Noir could tell. Still, a promise was a promise. “All right then, I’ll let you get back to it. _Au revoir!_ ” He grinned cheekily as he stepped backwards through the dimensional gate.

Maur heard his voice fading out as the gate closed. “And be sure to write another fluffy reveal for My Lady!”

Maur let her head hang for a few seconds. At least she got him to leave. Not that she really wanted him to, but…reasons. ”You can come down now, Ranma.”

The pigtailed redhead clinging to Maur’s ceiling using nothing but her fingers whimpered. “Are you sure he’s gone?”

“Gate’s shut, Cat’s gone. And he wasn’t a real cat anyway. No need to be scared.” As soon as the last words left her mouth, Maur knew she was going to regret them.

“I’m not s-scared of anything!” came the outraged (but shaky) voice as Ranma dropped from the ceiling to land on her (his? never could tell with his curse what pronoun he was using in the next minute) feet.

“Uh-huh. Not scared at all. Which is why you hid on my ceiling for over twenty minutes.” Maur glanced over as she pulled the laptop back in front of her. “Don’t even want to know _how_ you got up there. Bad enough you’ve been here for twenty-odd years, since the gate closed before you went back through it.”

“I told you. Write a story in my universe, and the gate will open up again.”

“But yours was always my brother’s favorite show. Not mine.” Maur’s eyes misted over as she thought of her older brother, who had introduced her to fanfiction all those years ago when she was desperate for something new to read and too poor for books. “He’s the one who originally brought you here, reading all your stories and passing the good ones on to me.” She sighed. “I miss him.”

Ranma Saotome glanced around, suddenly uncomfortable. “Sorry he died.” She scratched the back of her head.

“It’s okay. Long time ago, and he’s out of pain.” Maur shook her head as she rubbed the mist out of her eyes, then looked up fast as another electric tingle passed over her skin. “Oh, not _again…_ ”

“What?” Ranma moved to a defensive stance as another dimensional portal opened. “I-is the c-cat coming back?”

But a glance through the portal showed a section of Japan. “Ranma- I -think it’s for you…” Maur looked over at the character that had kept her company for years after her brother’s death. “Maybe…”

Ranma edged over to the portal and looked through. “It is! There’s the dojo!”

Maur smiled at the young boy-girl. _He hasn’t changed at all…_ But most characters didn’t, away from their worlds. “So, go! What are you waiting for?”

Ranma shuffled her feet. “Uh…thanks. For not tossing me out when I got stuck here.”

“You’re welcome. Now,go! Don’t get stuck here again!” Maur jumped up and practically shoved the young martial artist through the portal. (And if that shove had a bit of goodbye half-hug in it, no one could tell.)

As soon as the redhead was through, the portal snapped shut. Maur heaved a sigh. It had been so long since characters began popping in from whatever world she was thinking about at the time. Maybe now she could just write without interruptions.

_Everyone’s back where they should be,_ she thought. _And that’s as it supposed to be._ She sat back at her laptop with a smile. She hoped this story was going to be a good one.

**Author's Note:**

> There was a thread, back in the 90's sometime, where the main characters of Ranma 1/2 came to punish fanfiction authors for 'tormenting' them by giving them Ranma's curse. (For those who don't know, Saotome Ranma is a boy martial artist who turns female at the touch of cold water; hot water changes him back. And most of the contributing authors were male...you can imagine the stories.)
> 
> Back then, I was (still am) a voracious reader. I was also poor, despite having worked odd jobs since I was fourteen. Fanfiction was a way to sate the need to read, and EphJay introduced me to his favorites (Ranma 1/2, Bubblegum Crisis, and Nuku Nuku Cat Girl were a few). Although he made sure to read them first, as he didn't want little sister exposed to smut- labelling was not always accurate.
> 
> This story is half me missing him a lot lately, and half me trying to explain my writing process to myself. Goodness knows few of the people I've explained it to has understood it. EphJay was the only person who's not only seen my personal code, but cracked it- he was one intelligent guy.
> 
> Thank you for the (self) indulgence. Let me know what you think.


End file.
